Henry Aubin: PQ yet to master municipal politics

Henry Aubin, The Gazette01.10.2013

Henry Aubin

This is an election year — Nov. 3 will be voting day in all 1,100 cities, towns and villages across Quebec. Many candidates are already raising funds. Yet the government has still to take even preliminary steps to reform this practice, Henry Aubin writes.Gordon Beck
/ Gazette file photo

MONTREAL — The Parti Québécois government is being mystifyingly ineffectual in dealing with scandal-plagued municipal politics.

Political financing is, as everyone has known for years, the way that special interests — construction contractors, developers, lawyers, consultants and computer people — can lawfully buy privileged treatment in too many city halls. You’d think that the PQ, which strenuously denounced this system when it was in opposition, would reform it in a timely manner.

The government is failing in three ways.

Timing. This is an election year — Nov. 3 will be voting day in all 1,100 cities, towns and villages across Quebec. Many candidates are already raising funds. Yet the government has still to take even preliminary steps to reform this practice.

The minister of municipal affairs, Sylvain Gaudreault, says he’ll table a reform bill in February or March. Given the need for subsequent public hearings and debate, that means the bill would probably not become law until May or June. Until then, candidates will be free to squeeze in the sort of problematic fundraising that has helped discredit Quebec municipal politics.

To be sure, this government has only been in power since September. But changing the financing rules is not complicated and ought not to be time-consuming. Indeed, money is as much a problem in provincial politics as on the municipal scene, and yet back in November this same government was able to table legislation, Bill 2, to reform the financing of provincial candidates and to get it voted into law before Christmas. (Hats off to that law’s hustling sponsor, the minister of democratic institutions, Bernard Drainville.)

Content. The reform that Gaudreault says he is considering is weak in comparison to Bill 2.

Bill 2 cut the maximum annual contribution in provincial politics from $1,000 to $100. Gaudreault, however, told La Presse this week that he’s thinking of only reducing the maximum annual contribution in municipal politics from $1,000 to $500.

Given that municipal elections entail less travel costs, TV advertising and ballyhoo than do provincial contests, it’s hard to see why the ceiling on municipal donations should be any higher at all than for provincial ones — let alone five times higher.

Under the earlier law for provincial elections, a business person seeking to curry favour lawfully with a provincial politician would donate $1,000 and get, say, four associates or family members to donate $1,000 for a total package of $5,000. Under Bill 2, a business person would have to round up maximum donations from 49 other people to come up with the same sum.

To produce a $5,000 gift for a municipal politician, however, a business person would need to find only nine other people. Big difference. Purchasing influence will be far easier municipally than provincially.

Rationale. Gaudreault opposes a $100 ceiling on grounds it would discriminate against independent candidates (as distinct from party candidates). A $100 limit, he told La Presse, “could make it difficult for an independent candidate for city council to find money for posters and to campaign.”

I called Karim Boulos to see what he thought of that in Montreal. He’s well qualified to have opinion, having run for city council both as a party member and as an independent. (He won a seat as a Union Montreal candidate in Ville Marie in 2004, and as an independent he finished second in a six-candidate field in 2009.)

Boulos scoffed at the idea that a $100 ceiling would hurt independents. Imposing such a limit on party candidates and independent candidates alike, he said, would be a “wise move.” A “grassroots person” can raise enough for a campaign by “hitting up 20 friends for $100 each.”

I can’t generalize about what the situation might be in each and every town and village in Quebec. But in Montreal, Laval, Longueuil and most the small suburbs, a $500 ceiling would be a mock-reform.

The Marois government says that this year’s reform will be a temporary measure to cover the coming municipal elections; it may propose permanent changes next year (perhaps influenced by the Charbonneau inquiry’s future recommendations). Fine. But the problem is that this temporary reform is a case of too little, too late.

Brace yourself in 2013 for cynical, overly moneyed campaigns in many municipalities. Under the PQ, the special interests are still riding high.

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